


Dēsīderium

by maelpereji



Series: Michael & Dean (Michean) [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergent, Established Relationship, Grief, M/M, Post Season 15, emotional distress, little bit racy towards the end but nothing really explicit, michean - Freeform, season 15 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28036845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelpereji/pseuds/maelpereji
Summary: Dean does not have the answers - nobody does - but The Righteous Man hears every word of everything the Archangel Michael cries out, and he listens, even as morning approaches, spilling soft light through gargantuan, stained glass windows bearing the likeness and lies of God Himself.“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” It’s a promise as much as a confession, spilling from Dean’s mouth with all the quiet, steely emotion he keeps locked within. “Nothing can take you away from me. No God, no nothing.”
Relationships: Michael/Dean Winchester
Series: Michael & Dean (Michean) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2052072
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	Dēsīderium

**Author's Note:**

> Post-season 15, canon divergent. SPOILERS for S15 mentioned from HERE. The main divergences are: Michael is never destroyed by Chuck, but instead, injured in the confrontation. Dean doesn’t die, Castiel is revived by Jack before he hops on the first deity-express train off earth, and life goes on. Adam and all the other human souls that Chuck eliminated during the Rapture are restored. I know… sounds WAY too happy for my usual angst-fest, right? :D Oh, did I mention that Michael is slowly losing his Grace? No? Oops! 
> 
> Also, just another little note: I live in the UK, thus I have no idea what the actual distance is from the MoL Bunker to the Cathedral of Saint Michael mentioned in this fic, so I just estimated a reasonable time frame that fits in with the events of the story. AND! If you're wondering what Michael's new vessel looks like, google search Matt Daddario, as he's my face claim.

War leaves wounds and scars aplenty, but not all battle wounds can be recovered from. Not all losses can be grieved, and not all change is as _good_ on the surface as it may appear to be.

Chuck is gone. Not dead, but _defeated,_ his place in the universe usurped by a mere child. That child, Jack, is gone, too. Unseen, but watchful in the ways that Chuck _used_ to be. Castiel, returned to former, radiant glory, acts as Jack’s right hand.

Life, restored, moves forward upon the earth.

Adam Milligan, the old soul owed so much by Heaven, by _Michael,_ is allowed to move forward too, free from the bonds of celestial possession. Finally liberated to make of his life what he wishes from now on – albeit, with an Archangel on speed-dial, just in case.

The Winchesters, against all odds, are alive and kicking – nothing unusual there.

Heaven itself is renewed – transformed by the touch of this new, _fair_ God. But the only surviving Archangel, Michael, does not return to it. His place is no longer Heaven, his duty no more tied to the callous indifference of a deity that turned away from his own first son’s _screams._

Michael acquires a new vessel, an empty body that will not be missed from the world, and stays, oddly, near _Dean_.

He is battle weary and wounded from his altercation with Chuck, Grace severed, wings weak and _aching,_ but thanks to the Nephilim, he is alive. Or, what passes for it, now that all he had once lived _for_ is dead.

He wonders, briefly, at the irony of Jack’s saving grace (he cannot think of the child as ‘God’), in having restored Castiel to Seraphim radiance, but also having deemed his intervention when Chuck had _attempted_ to destroy Michael, as enough.

But Michael, bearing the wounds of war and diminished in the light of so much change, prefers this. He prefers to grasp at his pain, at his failures, for at least in _them_ , he can find the remnants of his old life. Of the things that had mattered for so long. They are in tatters, ripped to shreds, but those shreds themselves still _matter,_ so long as he manages to keep hold of them – and so, he _grips,_ and he _holds tight_ to his pain, for it reminds him of God, of his brothers, of Heaven, of the purpose he _used_ to have in this world.

He assumes his Grace will regenerate in time, but instead, slowly, it begins to wane further. His injuries do not heal, his wings do not recover. Everything he has ever known is changed, and now, Michael himself is _fading._

The world itself is new, reborn in Jack’s image. Perhaps Michael’s existence as an Archangel is at an end now that his _purpose_ has been rescinded by this new God.

Instinct _screams_ at him to flee, but where is he to go? He has no idea what his place in this new world order is meant to be, and now, he is losing the essence of what he _has_ _been_ since the dawn of everything.

He grieves - for the first time in Creation - for _himself,_ for the family he has lost, for the things he has endured, for the mistakes he has made, for the love and devotion he gave to a Father that did not care-

-and through it all, there is _Dean_.

How they even come to _be_ is a murky, bemusing clash of anger, fervour, heartache, pain, and above all that, persisting and shining, the very essence of something _meant to be_ that outside of the fury, outside of the bickering, and the sins and debts owed, allows them to find balance.

By the time a full year has passed since the final confrontation with Chuck, Michael’s Grace is a barely beating, barely alive creature that _cries out_ in the night.

It demands to be heard, even if only for this one, last time – and so, Michael does the only thing that comes as naturally to him as flight.

In the middle of the night, once Dean is safely cradled within the arms of slumber, he quietly retrieves his heart from The Righteous Man’s hands, and he _flees_.

Churches are his refuge no more, but they are the places Michael’s celestial spirit _screams_ outfor. So, pulling on the last tendrils of power under his control to make the three hour car journey in the space of a human heartbeat, he beats the weight of his pitiful, fading wings and heads for the Cathedral of Saint Michael.

He knows there is no other place he will be able to _carve_ this sin out of himself, whether he does so in the name of the God who betrayed him, or simply in the name of self preservation.

2 AM heralds the call of a night owl as Michael finds himself picking the lock of the Cathedral with the lock-pick Dean gave him several weeks prior. Having used up all the Grace he can in flight, he has none to spare even for a task as _small_ as forcing a locked door to open at his (previously) divine touch.

Once inside, he leaves the doors ajar and wide, for there is not a single soul here; the building is as silent and as dead as Michael’s love for God now is, but his heart is full of another kind of love that demands to be heard. To be _felt_ in all of its intricately painful glory.

The long walk down the centre of the aisle feels like a death march, pulling his battered heart deeper and _deeper_ with every step, and the fading Archangel falls to his knees once he arrives at the altar, at a loss as to _what_ or _who_ he should pray to.

Who is he to implore the mercies of, now that his God is as good as dead? What is he to say to this new entity, this new God, this _child_ , who may or may not be watching, listening to his every word, summoned and offered up with delicate agony?

In the end, Michael says nothing.

He does not pray, and he does not speak. Instead, he stares at the relics of the religion he helped to build so very long ago – the crucifix, the Bible, offerings that glitter gold and silver, stained glass bearing Saints of old, the burnt down pillar candles that exude something sinister in the darkness of the night – and he holds true to silence and grief alike.

It is several hours later when the rumble of a familiar engine catches his ear. It draws closer and closer, the only noise to have disturbed the long watch of the night thus far, and before long, the Impala has grumbled to a stop, the creak of the driver’s side door flung open, then slammed to in quick succession.

Before very long, Dean Winchester is beside him: hair unkempt, sporting yesterday’s scruff and wrinkled, two-day worn clothes. He looks as though he has tumbled straight out of bed and into the first attire to hand, wasting no time. It both _hurts_ and _soothes_ Michael that Dean cares so very much, but it is something he cannot afford to focus on, for he is both righteously furious with Dean _and,_ somehow, completely and irrevocably in love with him.

Michael’s true vessel sits not in the pews, nor beside the fading Archangel, but upon the first step of the altar - and just for a beat, Michael is stolen by such sheer irony that he forgets _why_ his chest bears this ragged, torn, and bleeding hole in God’s name, when the true face of divinity is _right here_ with him.

Dean speaks to him of choice, of how things are going to get easier, and - not without a lilt of humour tugging at his lips - how he’s surprised that Michael was able to pick the Cathedral lock, after having only tried such a stunt once before, and on a lock that Dean had referred to as ‘child’s play’.

He’s _proud,_ and it both stings _and_ balms Michael’s spirit at the same time. He does not ask how Dean can _tell_ that he picked the lock; he supposes it must be down to simple experience.

Dean’s is a comment made in front, and they both know it; something to smother the fact that Dean has driven several hours into the night to get to Michael, simply to _be_ with him as the Archangel’s heart crumbles. But there is no front to the way that Dean ends up on his own knees, fingers tracing Michael’s still damp cheeks, lips branding him with the evidence of their joint sins.

Michael _resists_ at first, turns his gaze away from the pastures in Dean’s gaze that so remind him of Eden, away from the countless, endless little things Dean _does_ from day to day, the ones that scream out the depth of his regret for the things he _did_ to Michael ten years ago, away from the weary weight of his _own_ heart as it cries out to be heard above his anger.

When Dean speaks, he is both gentle and fierce all at once, and Michael is beholden to him whether he wants to be or not; enslaved to this thing called love, to Dean, and to every intrinsically delicate piece of everything between them, because it is stronger than faith. 

Stronger than God _ever_ was.

“I know it hurts. I know.”

The words are the mechanism that opens the floodgate of emotion Michael hadn’t known was in place.

_“Why wasn’t I enough? Why weren’t any of us enough, Dean? Why did Lucifer need to be sacrificed? Why did my brothers have to die? What did I do wrong? Why was I punished? Did He ever really love us? Did we ever really matter? Did anything? Was it all for nothing? Were we ever meant to achieve the paradise He promised? Was it all just a game, all along, right from the beginning?”_

A thousand _whys,_ all without answers. 

Dean does not have the answers, nobody does, but The Righteous Man hears every word of everything the Archangel cries out, and he _listens,_ even as morning approaches, spilling soft light into the Cathedral through gargantuan, stained glass windows that bear the likeness and lies of God Himself.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” It’s a promise as much as a confession, spilling from Dean’s mouth with all the quiet, steely emotion he keeps locked within. “Nothing can take you away from me. No God, no _nothing.”_

It is impossible not to believe a man of Dean’s conviction, for every promise he has ever given – to _anyone_ – has been cast into every raging fire, every trial and tribulation, every painful, agonising _thing_ upon and below this earth, before Dean has deigned to _relent._

“ _I’m sorry._ ” Dean whispers, and the words are so _real,_ so raw, that Michael cannot help but to wind his arms around Dean’s neck and to pull the human against him as he, too, _crumbles_ under the burdens of agonies that he gasps tears for into Michael’s throat.

“I know.” Michael mutters, the words a mantra of forgiveness as he presses kisses into Dean’s hair. _“I know.”_

Dean is sorry; has been so for so long now, that nearly every glance exchanged between them holds the weight of both their feelings and the quiet, unbidden acknowledgement, that despite what they _have_ , despite the serenity they have carved out for themselves upon the playground of rubble a false God left to them, they cannot _move on_ until they both allow the past to rest where it cannot hurt either of them anymore, within the graveyard of memoirs.

“Let’s go home.”

_Home._

Of their own accord, Michael’s eyes slip skyward as he speaks the words, but Heaven is no longer his home and he does not _wish_ to return there.

Dawn has arrived by the time they leave, and the early morning light casts the evidence of a handful of late nights across Dean’s face as he pulls closed the doors of the Cathedral, and reaches into the pockets of his jeans for the car keys.

Silently, Michael holds out his hand for them. It’s obvious that Dean _wants_ to decline – not out of mistrust, but on principal. Michael knows how to drive; Dean has seen to that (as well as many other things), and because he is – unsurprisingly – _exceptionally_ good at following instructions, Michael is somehow both a reckless _and_ safe driver all at once.

With Michael at the wheel, it isn’t long before Dean is asleep, slumped and head lolling back against the passenger seat, but his body is angled towards Michael – and the latter has _just_ enough Grace left to be able to safely take his eyes off the road occasionally and instead, take in Dean.

Like this, it is impossible to ignore what Michael knows.

He is in love with Dean, but it _hurts._ Constantly.

It _hurts_ to look at him, to want nothing else upon, above, or below this earth as much as he has ever wanted to be with Dean Winchester, and to know, deeply, that he cannot _be_ Dean’s until he lays to rest this Creation-old grief he holds for his Father.

It’s a big ask. _Huge._ Too huge to process in the same moment he is grieving for the loss of his old life, too - but Dean deserves _better_ than this.

Better than having to chase him across the country in the middle of the night. Better than having to take on the burdens of a celestial being that by now, _should_ have learnt for himself how to exist outside of purpose.

It is with this in mind that Michael finds himself _gripping_ the steering wheel of the Impala, turning his eyes upon the road, and resolute, but burning, _buries_ his fury and his grief, along with the last, fading remnants of his Grace.

Dean is awake by the time the Impala rumbles back into the bunker’s garage, but he knows – he can _tell,_ as he always has been able to, the direction of Michael’s thoughts, and so, he does the one thing he knows will guarantee them _both_ some peace.

He pulls Michael into the quiet sanctuary of his darkened bedroom, strips them both bare, and makes every inch of Michael _feel_ so very much, that by the time he spills himself into Dean’s willing, eager mouth, the only prayer Michael can ever recall being on his lips before now is Dean’s name.

Dean takes it all; every willing quark, and Michael makes sure to kiss him until he’s sure that no tendril of his failing, fading Grace does not know the taste of Dean Winchester’s soul, because he does not know how much longer he has left to do this. To _etch_ Dean’s very being into every part of himself, to write the name of The Righteous Man that owns his heart into the glorious, divine being that he _used_ to be. He gives back, a hundred fold, until Dean is a writhing, desperate mess with nothing left of his vocabulary but Michael's name, and just for the moment, it is enough. When they relent, spent and breathless into an aftermath of restful bliss, something that tastes like _peace_ beckons. 

Dean does not care whether Michael is an Archangel or not, and he doesn’t _need_ to say the words, for they are so very obvious in the way he holds on, tighter, and _tighter_ , no matter how far or fast Michael falls. He has never not been _right here_ , offering words, kisses, touches, anything and everything he can, as Michael loses every part of what used to make him who he was.

There is no way to repay such selflessness, no words that exist that come close to being able to profess just _what_ Dean means to him. So, Michael does the only thing he can: he kisses Dean with all the bright, dying fury of his fading Grace, and he hopes, and he hopes, and he _hopes,_ that Dean understands.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos fuel me!


End file.
